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Fires Burning in Central Africa

In Angola, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Zambia, hundreds of fires are burning due to seasonal burning of savannah vegetation for land clearing in preparation for agriculture. The burning has filled the atmosphere with haze and smoke.

The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument onboard Aqua has infrared capabilities that can detect heat from the various wildfires. The image was captured on August 02, 2012 at 12:20 UTC (8:20 a.m. EDT). In the MODIS images, fires, or hot spots are color coded as red areas in imagery and smoke appears in light brown. Images are generated at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.